


see me rise like a flame

by Anemoi



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-07-27 09:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16216631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi
Summary: He lasts two days in the clinic before dialing John’s number.





	see me rise like a flame

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yvenger (jjjat3am)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjjat3am/gifts).



> Bit of context as it's throwback fic: it's the year 2000, Redders finally broke his knee so much he had to get surgery in America, Barnesy just got fired from Celtic for fucking up harder than any Celtic manager had fucked up before.
> 
>  
> 
> Dear Julija, hope u like this one!

_I wish we met at a different time._

 

  
  
  
-

 

 

 

2000, Colorado.

 

He lasts two days in the clinic before dialing John’s number. It’s the middle of summer, and Jamie thinks, _this shouldn’t be a bad time-_ and the ring tone goes twice while his heart hammers out of his chest, waiting, that swooping feeling of anticipation in his throat making him dizzy.

 

“Hello?” John’s voice hits him like cold water, like a breeze stealing through the hot summer air. Jamie closes his eyes, knuckles white on his phone. _Hello,_ that one word in that contained, slightly guarded voice-

 

“Hi,” Jamie says, “It’s me. Redders. I- How’ve you-”

 

“Redders! I’m-”

“Oh-”

 

They both break off and laugh at this, the way they’re out of sync with each other, all that distance strung out in between them.

 

“Where are you?” Jamie says instead, gentle.

 

“You’ll never guess,” John says. He sounds cheerful. There’s some shuffling and suddenly Jamie hears, clear as day, waves in the background. There’s some sort of sea bird calling, distant. It crackled in his ear like static.

 

“A beach?” Jamie hazards, scratching at the bandage on his knee. He’s aware he’s smiling, stupid fond curve to his mouth he can’t seem to stop.

 

“Jamaica!”

 

“Oh,” Jamie says. “Is it nice? I’ve never been.”

 

“It’s lovely,” John sighs, the guardedness slipping out of his voice slowly. Jamie imagines him on a beach with crystal clear water and white sand, the sort of sand that would be good to step on barefoot, soft and yielding. “Needed a bit of change anyway. Scotland was bloody cold. You should visit, some time.”

 

“I’d love that. I’m in- hospital right now. Got a knee thing. Might be a few weeks and then maybe I can- play again.” He doesn’t say _walk again_ , even though that omission left cracks in the middle of his sentences, the bits he cut off and couldn’t face saying out loud, even if it was to John, especially if it was to John.

 

John waits, just breathing on the line. Jamie had been bad, always, at trying to figure out what John thinks. Or maybe it really wasn’t his fault. John was good at hiding what he thought, good at drawing down the polite inscrutable facade. Jamie fidgeted some more, tugging the edges of his bandage that slowly unraveled, one thread at a time.

 

“You’ll be alright, Redders,” John says, when it was clear Jamie wasn’t going to add anything else. There’s no evidence of that, Jamie wants to say. There’d been no evidence of any of that, that he would be alright, that he’d go back to playing, that he could even kick a ball again without his knee shattering apart like fragile ice on the water.

 

Jamie counts to ten in his head. “Anyhow. I just wanted to hear your voice. The operation is the day after tomorrow. And. I don’t know. I might be a bit out of it after.”

 

“When will you leave?”

 

“Maybe- if everything’s fine- in a month.”

 

John’s silent, as though considering.

 

“Then Liverpool, after?” he says finally. “I’ll come. Before the season starts.”

 

“I won’t be able to play by then, anyway,” Jamie says, trying to push away that choked up feeling. “I-”

 

John says something then, three stupid little words that Jamie swears he must’ve only thought he heard, when he thinks about it, later in bed with his fist clenched over his chest to stop his heart from beating right out of his body. He’s sure it was just- a figment of his over eager imagination- something all the pain meds concocted with his terror and desire.

 

-

 

He thinks about it very hard when they wheel him into the operating room. It’s not as mind numbingly terrifying as his first surgery, but there’s something about it just the same, the impending sense of doom. He thinks of John’s voice, like a cool hand pressed to his forehead when he’s running a fever. He’ll make it out of it. He has to.

 

Right before everything slips away into the bright light over the operating table, Jamie thinks, _a green field. Red stadium. A white line under my boots-_

 

-

 

It actually takes more than a month for him to get back to Liverpool, even though everything about the surgery went according to plan. Endless rehabilitation sessions and endless cycles of fear every time his knee so much as twinged when he put weight on it.

John hadn’t put a date on when he was visiting. Jamie didn’t know what to do about that, couldn’t really face a call, and so he sends _I’m back in Liverpool, if you still want to visit._ to John’s phone and tries to get a busy training schedule at Melwood. Robbie had shown up at the airport with sunglasses and a concierge sign for the hotel downtown for Jamie’s flight back from America, getting instantly swarmed as usual by people who couldn’t mistake his face for anyone else’s.

 

Robbie earned himself a smack for that, but after their quick getaway Jamie’s glad, anyhow, that Robbie had come to pick him up. Robbie bustled around Jamie’s kitchen, making tea and folding a blanket over Jamie’s knees and calling him Grandad for his walking stick, until Jamie swats him, laughing, and threatens to kick him out.

 

“I’ve got to go, anyway. Early training tomorrow,” Robbie says. He reaches out, sudden, touches the side of Jamie’s hair, and lets his hand fall on Jamie’s shoulder. Jamie looks at him, but Robbie’s looking away, only his gripping fingers telling Jamie what Robbie wanted to say.

 

“Go on,” Jamie says around the lump in his throat, praying his voice sounded light enough. “I’m all fixed. I just need time to take it easy, you know.”

 

Robbie looked at him, then, says, “You’re still the captain, Redders.” There wasn’t an ounce of pity in his voice, all matter of fact. He leaves and shuts the door, quiet.

 

Jamie tips his head back against his armchair and shuts his eyes against the stinging, holds his mug of tea tight even though it was starting to burn his fingers.

 

-

 

John shows up on a sunday afternoon, dropped off at Jamie’s gates by a taxi and sporting some exuberantly coloured shirt that looked too thin for the weather. Jamie buzzes him in and then meets him halfway down the path, trying not to look like the wife of an army man who’s come home after the war. He makes himself stop square in the middle and waits.

 

“Oi,” John says, waving cheerfully. He only had a duffle with him, and he practically glowed, like he carried some of that heat from Kingston with him to this dreary cold Liverpool day.

 

“Hey,” Jamie says, and finds himself grinning. It’s startling, how he doesn’t remember the last time he smiled that wide, the muscles in his face too tense now. He walks right into John’s open arms and holds on.

 

“I missed you,” he blurts, before he can take it back. John pulls back and looks at him, the way he always does, considering and sincere and-

 

“I missed you too,” John says, gently, and Jamie believes him.

 

-

 

John fits into his life so easily it’s odd to think he was only visiting. They made dinner together in the afternoon and talked a lot, filling in gaps in their lives. Every time Jamie mentions Celtic John gets withdrawn, quiet, not in a way that anyone unfamiliar with him would notice but which sticks out like a sore thumb to Jamie. They circle, carefully, over Jamie’s knee and the fact he winces when he walks sometimes.

 

They go to a match together, Robbie with a cheeky wave up at them in the box and John’s hands clenching on the railing every time the ball got near the goalpost. Jamie knows he’s supposed to be looking at the pitch, and he was, Michael like a flash of lightning making something out of nothing and so young it hurt something in Jamie’s chest, but he keeps stealing looks at John instead. Wonders, for a second, what it’d be like to see John in the kit again, if against all odds, he could do what he used to, direct all that shining brilliance and send it spreading over the field.

 

John catches him looking, once, and loosens his hold on the handrail ruefully.

 

“Got to learn to let go, huh?” he says. Jamie leans his shoulder into John’s, wordless. Remembers the torrent of commands John unleashes on the pitch every game, before, shouting at the team and shaping them up and pushing them onwards.

 

Below them Michael’s hand goes up and there’s a blur of white in the back of the net. Jamie shouts- they turn to each other- eyes bright, grinning too hard in disbelief, overtaken by the sheer, easy magic of a goal- and for second, holding on to John and bouncing like a ten year old at his first game, Jamie forgets about his knee, the injury, everything. There’s only them, and everyone around them, all red, warm, warm, warm.

 

-

 

They get home that day and Jamie knows he’s going to be the first one to break. It’s always been like that, somehow. Jamie’s not someone who can stop himself from getting what he wants, can’t even seem to try.

 

He says, “John.” And John turns around to him, putting the plate down. Behind them the pasta’s still boiling in the pot. He doesn’t say- _Barnesy_ or _Digger_ or any of the other childish nicknames they’ve both earned over the years. The names that gelled them together into a team, into friends. Jamie doesn’t know why, just thinks with that same desperate want after every twinge in his leg- _please, please, please God_ -

 

He steps around the kitchen island till he gets to John. It’s still strange to Jamie, the fact he’s taller than John now. His hands shake when he brings them up, gentle, and cups John’s face.

 

“Redders,” John says, straight faced and solemn. “Jamie.” Then he pulls Jamie in and kisses him.

 

Jamie felt the relief like putting his foot down on solid ground.

 

-

 

“Why didn’t you call,” Jamie says, later, lying against John’s chest in the bath. It’s not as big as the ones they had in the training center, but it’s bigger than the ones he used to have as a kid. There are some perks to buying your own house. John sighs, stretching out lazily. Jamie feels him press a kiss to the back of his head, absent.

 

“I didn’t know what to say,” John says, after a while. That seemed like a good enough reason, Jamie tries to tell himself.

“Celtic was the worst thing I’ve ever been a part of,” John says, finally. “I’ve been through lots. But Celtic- I don’t think I’ll ever get a managing job again.”

 

“It wasn’t your fault,” Jamie says, automatic.

 

“How do you know?”

 

Jamie sits up, slightly red. John laughs. “I watched all the games I could. It’s just- unlucky-”

 

“It’s alright,” John says, gently. His head falls back against the edge of the tub, eyes closed. Jamie leans in to kiss his neck, keeps his mouth there when John shivers.

 

-

 

“What’ll you do now?” Jamie says. John’s lying with his head in Jamie’s lap, and the television’s on, some nature documentary about tigers. Jamie’s skin still has that shiny clean feeling to it, his fingertips all rubbery and wrinkled from spending too much time in the water. John had laughed at him for the stripes of wet hair plastered over his face that he never thought to push aside.

 

 _Lucky you’re so good looking_ , John had said, though he kissed away any sting the words might have had.

 

John takes his time considering the question. It unnerved Jamie at first, the way John goes at his own pace and how he never says anything unless he meant it.

 

He says, eyes closed, “I think I’ll keep looking for management jobs. Maybe nothing big right now. But Championship..”

 

Jamie lets him trail off, flicking through the channels. There’s a replay of the match on, and they watch that for a bit. If Jamie squinted they became all color and shape, the people indistinguishable from bright spots of light.

 

“What do you think you’d be if you weren’t a footballer?” John says, suddenly.

 

“A singer,” Jamie says, automatic. “Be in a band.”

 

“What? You can’t even sing!”

 

“You didn’t say that was one of the rules, did you? And you’ve never heard me.”

 

John laughs, eyes crinkled. “So, can you?”

 

“I can rap better than you, old man.” Jamie regrets laying out the challenge as soon as he says it, because John gets up, energized, and tries to make him rap something. He’s pinned Jamie on the sofa, hard fingers reaching for Jamie’s soft spot in his ribs while Jamie laughs helplessly and swears at him.

 

“Will you rap or will you concede defeat?” John says, grinning down at him.

 

“I’m- Alright! You’re better,” Jamie says, between gasps. He pulls John’s hands up from his ribs, and John’s eyes softens.

 

They stay on the sofa for a long time, pressed together in ways that didn’t quite fit, John’s fingers carding through Jamie’s too-long hair.

 

-

 

It’s only the next day, when John’s leaving, that he realises he never asked John what his answer was. By then John’s waiting at the corner for his taxi and Jamie shuffles next to him, reluctant to leave for training. John keeps glancing at him, amused fond looks that made Jamie screw up his eyes to keep from blushing. He wanted John to stay, but he couldn’t. How could he? Jamie couldn’t envision a world where that would happen.

 

Maybe in another time. Maybe in another world. Maybe then John was a Professor and Jamie had scraped together enough A levels to go to university; maybe John was a lawyer and Jamie a detective and they worked a case together; maybe they were both ordinary, somehow, two people working in separate companies at a 9 to 5 job and Jamie spilled coffee on John one day-

 

Truth be told, he couldn’t see that happen either. Call it a failure of imagination, or maybe it’s just what had really happened was already too fantastic for imagination to supplant. He remembers, seventeen years old and coming to a club under a legend like John had been then, unable to sleep from excitement, stuttering his way around the team on too long legs, like Bambi lost in a forest. And the presence of John, how the sheer brightness of him tearing up the field could have eclipsed the sun and sent Jamie reeling, every time, with bright spots in his vision.

 

Whatever he will be and whatever he could have been, he’d had: this. This is the one life he had, the one he wore his knee down to the bone for. He looks at John, wants to say, _I wish it had been kinder to us,_ apropos of nothing. He smooths his thumb across the wrinkles at the corner of John’s eyes instead, and John reaches out a hand to support him, warm against his waist.

 

“I’m fine,” Jamie says, both legs steady on the pavement.

 

“I know that,” John says, and he smiles, steady-eyed and clear.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading <3


End file.
